Thought I put together a very strong D3 team in Phelan with my Menlo squad this season. I had a NT 3rd round match-up against a Westminster team that is coached by aejones. While Westminster had a very good team, frankly, I was fairly confident of Menlo moving on to the Elite 8. The game results came in and we lose by double digits. Despite having some success playing HD, I continue to struggle with some aspects of this game. Considering aejones is one of the top HD coaches of all time, I'm guessing the main reason for this loss was due to me being significantly out coached. I would like to get some feedback about what I might have done wrong, either with this game in particular, or with the overall makeup of this team, so that I can avoid making similar mistakes in the future. Thanks, Dean

Menlo: www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx

Westminster: www.whatifsports.com/hd/TeamProfile/Ratings.aspx

The Game: www.whatifsports.com/hd/GameResults/BoxScore.aspx

Here is my Offensive distribution and 3pt settings for the game:

My 2 cents, wouldn't run uptempo when he is faster and better stam.

I thought Flowers had too much distro that game, yes he is an elite scorer, but look at the matchup, Flowers is a high ath/low spd SF.  But he loses athletically to Beasely as well as a huge speed disadvantage.  While Beasely is also their best defender.  Now I don't know who I would've put the extra distro on too though.

For uptempo I see it 2 ways, its not the best idea because he is a super talented ath/spd/def team higher ath/spd than you and runs a man so he won't foul as much if he were running a press against your uptempo, but I see why it was a good idea as well because of the lack of depth on the team trying to tire his guys out because of the small rotation used.  Personally I probably would've gone normal in that situation I think his ath/spd/def is strong to a point where you won't and didn't manage to expose his small rotation.

Personally I would've gone into the game expecting a loss.  I was actually surprised when I saw Centre's shooting the next game against aejones.

Also it's aejones, he wins many games it doesn't look like he will and he is one of the best all time coaches.

I would've gone with a -2 defense.  He doesn't attempt that many 3's

I think you are overthinking it... Ya some flaws were made but you have won 2 national championships there and had some runs... You are fine, you made a bad gameplan dont beat yourself up after a 30-2 season and a sweet 16 run

no offense to the coaches who posted it, but i'd ignore those tempo comments. you absolutely should have played uptempo in that game, i don't think its close, and i am a pretty strongly anti-uptempo coach (to put it lightly). when you are 12 on 9 running fb/press, uptempo is a given...

looking at the shooting %s on that game, there is no justification for the margin of that loss. you got unlucky. not saying you did everything perfect, but don't look at that as an expected result based on the inputs... 

a few things that i thought were interesting - as a m2m team, jonesy could double team your stud, and it worked well. helped his opposing player was a defensive stud, as others pointed out. it basically totally neutralized your #1. his #1, you couldn't double, and he crushed it. on average, his stud would out perform yours, with him having better defense and the double, but not by a 3-10 to 10-20 margin. 

you, as the press team, lost on the turnovers by 4. i guarantee with 100% certainty, on average you win the turnover battles. your passing sucks so its not like a typical +6 or so press margin you should have expected - but you definitely should have won by at least a couple, on average. a 6 turnover swing is a 6 possession swing which is the entire margin of victory.

bottom line, i agree, you should have won that game. but in 1 sim, anything can happen. you were correct in playing the +1 as well, IMO, don't agree with the -2 comment. i suspect al is taking the shortcut, seeing aejones took less 3s than his opponent - which is a good shortcut, i use it often. but what really matters is the % of fga that are 3pta and that % is 31 which is very significant. as a press team (especially as an uptempo fb/press team) i could see 2 possible choices for you, +1 and +2. thats really it, if you went -2 and lost i'd be telling you that was a big mistake...

you did underutilize cantor, hes your best and most efficient scorer, not much you can do as a backup though in terms of pushing him too hard. but i do think he should have had more than 18% of your distro - although in reality 16-17ppg for a 15mpg player, thats a lot already, so thats not a huge impact - but still. really, there's not much here. based on your setup and the teams, you were the favorite, im pretty confident there. and i pretty much disagree with 100% of what everyone else said here about your team - this is simply a case of small sample size. the expecting a loss comment... no offense to fd, but, no way. no way you go into that expecting a loss. you should have won handily on the boards - and you did. you should have won handily on turnovers - but you got beat down. and you should have at least broken even on the fg% battle, although honestly i would favor you, but you got destroyed. that isn't an "expect to lose". that's an expect to win but with 1 dice roll anything can happen - and it did. i understand losing to aejones makes you wonder, but don't, you played that fine. now team composition... you definitely could have used a strong per scorer on your starting lineup, and a passing pg. but its d3, thats a fine team and you can't have everything, i wouldn't worry about it. great team, nice season, sorry you got the ****** dice roll to end it.

apologize for the rambling, hit the bottle a bit early tonight - but not so much that i wouldn't stand 100% behind the analysis part of this post tomorrow. i just might back off the rambling and wording, but its really not even close here, you got screwed, plain and simple.

I agree with gill.  In the NT anything can happen.  Late in the NT every game is really a dice roll.  I agree on the defensive positioning and tempo.  You had a big Reb advantage and more depth so uptempo is good.  Same with the +1 or +2.  He shoots a high % from outside and it is not like he takes so few you can pack the paint.  Once you get to the S16 all the teams are good.  I never go into any tourney game expecting anything.  I just lost a game by missing 4 FTs in the final minutes.  It happens.

for reference while jones only had a 9 man rotation look at the stamina of his players:

PG-75
SG-92
SF-85
PF-75
C-82

Back-up PF 78

While I still see why you would run uptempo to try and exploit that especially 1 back up big man, but against a man defense with a pretty significant ath/spd and superb def, I think what happened is the uptempo clearly didn't get aejones in foul trouble or stamina trouble and in return the uptempo against the strong defense caused the weak shooting night in turn causing the loss.

Now honestly I think the biggest reason was the turnover battle I have no idea how his PG didn't have a single turnover I know they ran slowdown but thats just an amazing game for the PG.  I think the turnover battle is what was the biggest factor and ultimately I think thats just do to the sim, it could've easily been a game where you had a turnover advantage if not a substantially one, not a negative margin.

Posted by the0nlyis on 8/26/2015 10:31:00 PM (view original):
for reference while jones only had a 9 man rotation look at the stamina of his players:

PG-75
SG-92
SF-85
PF-75
C-82

Back-up PF 78

While I still see why you would run uptempo to try and exploit that especially 1 back up big man, but against a man defense with a pretty significant ath/spd and superb def, I think what happened is the uptempo clearly didn't get aejones in foul trouble or stamina trouble and in return the uptempo against the strong defense caused the weak shooting night in turn causing the loss.

Now honestly I think the biggest reason was the turnover battle I have no idea how his PG didn't have a single turnover I know they ran slowdown but thats just an amazing game for the PG.  I think the turnover battle is what was the biggest factor and ultimately I think thats just do to the sim, it could've easily been a game where you had a turnover advantage if not a substantially one, not a negative margin.

game is gone now, but menlo (or whichever team was aejones's team) was more tired than their opponent. fouls and fatigue are a dice roll - if the other player gets a good roll and doesn't have foul trouble, its effect can be modest, but if the other player has even 1 player in significant trouble, on a rotation like that, you can get a very substantial boost. 2 players and it can be a huge swing. you have to evaluate based on what could happen, not what did happen, and in the case here the uptempo was beneficial in its own right on fatigue impact, its just that the impact was modest, because there was no real foul trouble to speak of.

the uptempo isn't going to cause a massive gap in fg%, either, there is or at least can be a negative impact on fg% by running uptempo, but its not ever going to justify a massive margin like that. 

The main reason I went uptempo was because Westminster was only using a 9 man rotation. I was playing all 12 guys in my rotation, so, even with their higher stamina ratings and running slow down, I thought for sure they would run into at least some fatigue issues, but, if I remember right, Menlo had many more players with "tiring" indicators (which makes no sense to me). Westminster only had 2 players on their whole team with Reb ratings over 35. I figured Menlo would have an enormous advantage when one or both of those 2 players were out of the lineup and uptempo should have maximized those opportunities. While Menlo did get a few more offensive rebounds in the game, considering how poorly we shot the ball and our big Reb rating advantage, we should have gotten even more offensive rebounds than we did in my opinion. Why we did so poorly with our FG% and TOs is also a mystery to me.   

You are probably right about having Flowers at a lower distro the0nlyis. In hindsight, I actually probably should have moved Flowers to SG and lowered his 3pt setting to try to get some of Westminster's guards into foul trouble, which might have caused some of the problems gillspie described.  

I really appreciate the analysis and insight you guys have provided. It's very beneficial. I do feel a little better with the explanation that, even though I could have done a couple things differently, this was probably just one of those games when the dice roles didn't go my way. While it still sucks when it happens, I know that I've been on the other side of it and won games I shouldn't have because of lady luck. (One was an NT game against the0nlyis that I still don't think he has gotten over.)

Thanks again,
Dean 

Posted by affvid on 8/27/2015 1:40:00 PM (view original):
The main reason I went uptempo was because Westminster was only using a 9 man rotation. I was playing all 12 guys in my rotation, so, even with their higher stamina ratings and running slow down, I thought for sure they would run into at least some fatigue issues, but, if I remember right, Menlo had many more players with "tiring" indicators (which makes no sense to me). Westminster only had 2 players on their whole team with Reb ratings over 35. I figured Menlo would have an enormous advantage when one or both of those 2 players were out of the lineup and uptempo should have maximized those opportunities. While Menlo did get a few more offensive rebounds in the game, considering how poorly we shot the ball and our big Reb rating advantage, we should have gotten even more offensive rebounds than we did in my opinion. Why we did so poorly with our FG% and TOs is also a mystery to me.   

You are probably right about having Flowers at a lower distro the0nlyis. In hindsight, I actually probably should have moved Flowers to SG and lowered his 3pt setting to try to get some of Westminster's guards into foul trouble, which might have caused some of the problems gillspie described.  

I really appreciate the analysis and insight you guys have provided. It's very beneficial. I do feel a little better with the explanation that, even though I could have done a couple things differently, this was probably just one of those games when the dice roles didn't go my way. While it still sucks when it happens, I know that I've been on the other side of it and won games I shouldn't have because of lady luck. (One was an NT game against the0nlyis that I still don't think he has gotten over.)

Thanks again,
Dean 

HAHAHAHAHA why do you have to bring that uppppppppppppppp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But yeh I think if anything it was a unlucky sim, thats why I tried looking at how it went since there really wasn't too much that would've made a huge difference since you had some big advantages that you attempted to take advantage of,  and billy mentioned that what you did was correct in thinking, it just happened to not work out.

Here you are trying to help me out the0nlyis, and I open up that old wound. Bad Dean, bad. Lol I was as surprised with that win over Cal Tech by my Pacific Lutheran team in Knight as I was about this loss against Westminster. I guess what comes around goes around. It seems like I've had a string of NT disappoints in several different worlds lately, so HD needs to start showing my teams some love sometime soon. (I imagine everyone feels that way though. Lol)